So I was asked to show how I make our bath bombs.  I made some last Friday and took some photos to describe the process.

First I assemble the ingredients.  Here are the essential oils, bath color tabs, sprinkles and glitter.  Most of these are not readily available in our local grocery stores so I order them through amazon.

And here are the other ingredients.  These I do buy in the local stores except the citric acid comes from amazon too.

I use my trusty KitchenAid mixer.  I use the whisk attachment.  I put 4 ounces of baking soda, 2 ounces of citric acid, 2 ounces of corn starch and 2 ounces of epsom salt in.  I add some sprinkles (about 1/4 of the amount from the divided dispensers).  For me I add some glitter.  Tom is not too fond of the glitter.  This batch is for him so no glitter.  I use colors that correspond to the essential oil I am going to use.  I have learned to mix the dry ingredients very lightly, otherwise my kitchen gets covered in white dust.  Below is the dry ingredients before mixing.  I used to add pop rocks too, but they ended up not adding much to the bomb experience.

After the dry ingredients are lightly mixed, I mix the wet ingredients.  I used a small glass jar (from an old honey sample).  I put 2 teaspoons of water, 1.5 teaspoons of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of essential oil and 4 drops of food coloring in it.  I put the lid on and shake it some.  I used some neon food coloring for the first time, for this batch the blue.  It turns out that the purple and blue are good, but the green looks like yellow.

Then I slowly add this mixture to the dry ingredients while the mixer is going on low.  I used a rubber spatula to help mix the wet in as well.  The goal is to get the wet mixed in before too much of a reaction has occurred.  Here it is all mixed up.

Then i put more sprinkles in the bottoms of the molds.  I used to use some botanical substances like blossoms or herbs, but they did not add much so moved to the sprinkles.  I used again about 1/4 of the divided container amount divied into the molds.  These are molds left over from my soap making days.  I use the bar molds for Tom’s bombs and the heart molds for me.  That way we can tell them apart easily.  He does not like the floral or spicy oils (nor the glitter).

Next I fill the molds half full and press it in with a large spoon.  Then I add two bath color tabs to each bomb.

Then I add the rest of the mixture and pack it down good.

I let the mold sit while I make the heart molds and then after that get Tom’s new mixture ready.  When it is ready to go in the molds then I have to move the previous bombs out of their molds.  To do this I carefully place some newspaper (usually the sales ads) over the mold.

And then I careful flip it onto the larger news portions of the newspaper all spread out.

Then they get to dry overnight.

Next I will show you how I mix things up a bit.  This is the dry ingredients about to be mixed which with some orange and black sprinkles and some golden glitter.

This is what it looks like after a brief whisking.

Then I get the wet ingredients ready.  This time I used 1/2 teaspoon of sweet orange oil and 1/2 teaspoon of clove extract.  I used 2 drops of red food coloring and 4 drops of yellow.  The yellow food coloring is not very strong so I always double its amount.

Here it is all mixed up.

I added some sprinkles to the heart mold.

I added half of the mixture to the mold but this time I used one yellow and one red tab for each heart.

I added the rest of the mixture and pressed it down.

And then when the time came that I needed the heart mold again, I carefully flipped it.

And here they are post-flipping with Tom’s fir needle bombs and a batch of grapefruit waiting for flipping.

Here are all the bombs of the day.  I wanted to make 10 batch but had to stop at 8 as I ran out of corn starch.

I keep careful track of each batch I make since I first started.  Here are the ones from Friday.

So here is my bath water with a bomb from my previous batch.  It is a little hard to see the glitter and sprinkles in it.  I would love it if the internet could somehow figure out how to transmit odor.  It would definitely enhance the experience.

And here is my bombed bath with my book and my hard root beer.

There is not much better than this.  I need to try to get a video of the bomb going off in the tub.  It gets a little psychedelic sometimes.  These bath bombs are so relaxing for Tom and I.  The epson salt (we add a little extra when we draw the bath), the warmth, the odor, the quiet and the color all add to an amazing experience that helps us both physically and mentally.  The alcohol (and for me the book) also help.  Plus the residual oil really helps your skin.  It is a cheap and easy way to take a quick vacation.